Ignoring the Negro: Commodity, Capitalism, and Cultural Appropriation

The following paper moves on two fronts: the first movement is an examination of three important texts by W.E.B. Du Bois, Karl Marx, and Cedric Robinson, where I perform an exegesis to explore the ways in which the desiderata and destruction of the Black body, at the center of the practice of white supremacy/whiteness, is also at the center of capitalism. After this foundational work is completed, the second movement of the paper is toward revealing a throughline from the commoditization of the Black body as site of desiderata and destruction under chattel slavery towards rampant modes of appropriation of Black American cultural products. I argue that this process is a cornerstone of late capitalistic consumption, socioeconomic domination, and biopolitical control.